Top 100 Movies Of The 1990's: #14 The Fugitive
Box Office: $183.9 Million
Oscar Nominations: Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing
Oscar Wins: Best Supporting Actor (Tommy Lee Jones)
MovieRankings.Net: 94/100
Available To Stream: Amazon Prime ($4) Apple TV ($4)
The Fugitive has no business being this great. It really has no business being anything more than a decent late night watch on cable. It's a manhunt movie directed by Andrew Davis. Yet somehow, it is one of the greatest action movies ever made.
Tommy Lee Jones gets much of the credit for this movie elevating itself to becoming a Best Picture nominee. That's absolutely fair as he is terrific and deserving of the Supporting Actor Oscar he won. But, don't lose sight of the amazing job Harrison Ford does here. Ford taking the movie so seriously gives it such huge stakes. This is like the Nolan Dark Knight movies elevating themselves to becoming more than just "comic book movies". The premise of taking a 1960's tv show about chasing a one armed man around could have gone in a much campier direction. But with Ford reacting so honestly to his wife dying and the situation he is in, it becomes a much better film.
I brought up Tommy Lee Jones earlier but how great is it that the Academy gave an Oscar to a guy in an action movie? This is like when Marisa Tomei won for My Cousin Vinny a year earlier. Both were in genres (action and comedy) that are usually ignored by Oscar voters. They of course, went right back to ignoring these genres but this was a nice little blip.
It's pretty cool that Tommy Lee Jones became a movie star after this movie came out when he was 47 years old. He was nominated for an Oscar a couple years earlier for JFK and was a known actor but The Fugitive elevated him into a different stratosphere. He played it pretty wisely by choosing projects like Men In Black, The Client, Double Jeopardy and giving a bizarre performance in the very successful Batman Forever.
Rewatching this for the blog, I was asking myself "why is this SO good?" Obviously the acting which I mentioned is fantastic. The script is smart and strong but it's not revolutionary. I think what sets this apart is how this movie moves. The pacing is somehow breakneck but never feels rushed. In the first 40 minutes alone, you get the murder of Kimball's wife, Kimball being found guilty, the insane bus getting hit by train sequence and then Girard having the famous "I don't care" confrontation with Kimball and then this.
All of that in just the first 40 minutes!
It's also remarkable how well this movie has aged. Obviously you're not seeing cell phones but what people say and how they react to things feels just as modern as it did when this came out. I saw this in the theaters when I was 13 and was on the edge of my seat the entire time. I watched this again this week over 30 years later and was still widely entertained.
It's the greatest action movie of the decade.
14. The Fugitive
15. The Truman Show
16. Fargo
17. Swingers
18. Reservoir Dogs
19. There's Something About Mary
20. Sleepers
21. Schindler's List
22. Rushmore
23. Fight Club
24. Saving Private Ryan
25. True Romance
26. Dumb & Dumber
27. Kingpin
28. Donnie Brasco
29. Heat
30. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
31. Rounders
32. Unforgiven
33. Trainspotting
34. The Game
35. Out Of Sight
36. Carlito's Way
37. Seven
38. L.A. Confidential
39. Speed
40. Gattaca
41. Misery
42. Tombstone
43. Ransom
44. Wayne's World
45. The Insider
46. Back To The Future Part III
47. A Bronx Tale
48. The People Vs. Larry Flynt
49. Eyes Wide Shut
50. The Sandlot
51. Happy Gilmore
52. Contact
53. The Green Mile
54. Man On The Moon
55. Boyz N The Hood
56. Grosse Pointe Blank
57. Independence Day
58. The Rainmaker
59. Go
60. The Firm
61. Magnolia
62. The Talented Mr. Ripley
63. Tommy Boy
64. The Usual Suspects
65. In The Line Of Fire
66. My Cousin Vinny
67. Awakenings
68. JFK
69. Toy Story
70. Home Alone
71. Jerry Maguire
72. Titanic
73. Billy Madison
74. Apollo 13
75. Braveheart
76. Edward Scissorhands
77. Cape Fear
78. The River Wild
79. What's Eating Gilbert Grape?
80. 12 Monkeys
81. Stir Of Echoes
82. Mission: Impossible
83. Total Recall
84. Quiz Show
85. For Love Of The Game
86. Being John Malkovich
87. Men In Black
88. Scream
89. Alive
90. Three Kings
91. Glengarry Glen Ross
92. Die Hard With A Vengeance
93. The Blair Witch Project
94. Twister
95. Dirty Work
96. Election
97. Tremors
98. Any Given Sunday
99. The Wedding Singer
100. Clerks